Strength for runners: 20 minutes, 2 days, 3 exercises

You know you should be doing strength work. Your knees tell you every time you raise your mileage, the podcast you listen to while running tells you, and so does that tiresome friend who discovered the squat last year. The problem is that every routine you find turns out to be a five-day plan with twelve exercises, and you barely have room to run. Breathe: two twenty-minute sessions will do. Here's exactly which ones.

Less is more (and this time science says so)

The most recent guidance on strength training keeps pressing an idea that suits runners perfectly: consistency beats complexity. A short session you do twice a week all year round delivers far more than a sophisticated programme you abandon in week three because it doesn't fit your day.

And the benefit isn't cosmetic. Strength improves your running economy (you spend less energy at the same pace, which is literally more running for less) and works as injury insurance for tendons, hips and all that musculature which starts complaining when the long run arrives.

The routine: three exercises, that's all

Two days a week, on days that don't clash with your quality session. For each exercise: 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions, with 90 seconds' rest between sets and a moderate load, the kind that makes you grind on the last reps without your technique falling apart. That gives you a session of roughly twenty minutes.

The three exercises are the squat (or the leg press if you'd rather start guided), the deadlift or one of its variations, and the calf raise. Between them they cover what a runner needs: strong legs, a powerful posterior chain, and calves and an Achilles tendon capable of absorbing thousands of impacts without protesting.

The mistakes that will tempt you

The first is adding exercises. You start with three, then one day you see a video and add lunges, then glute bridges, then a plank… and three weeks later you have a 50-minute session that you no longer do. If you really want to expand the plan, do it once you've completed two months, and add one exercise, not five.

The second is doing strength the day before your long run and arriving on Sunday with legs made of concrete. Place your sessions where they get in the way least, and keep at least one easy day between strength work and your key run.

The routine that saves your knees isn't the most complete one: it's the one you're still doing in November, in the cold, without any enthusiasm.

Victoris philosophy

Start this week

Take your diary, block out two twenty-minute slots and don't negotiate with them. It doesn't matter whether it's at the gym, in the living room with a pair of dumbbells or with a rucksack full of books: what counts is that the load demands something of you and that you come back next week. Your knees, your average pace and next year's version of you will all be delighted.